Hero Dog Runs for Help When Canine Companion Falls Through Ice at Water Treatment Plant

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When a dog fell through ice at the Andalusia water treatment plant, another dog helped save its life by getting the attention of a worker at the plant.

“I’d left for lunch,” said Joe Dungan. “I came back and when I came back from lunch the one black dog was running around and tried to get my attention. I looked over in this hole over here and the other dog was in the water trying to get out, so I called 911.”

Rescue crews were sent to a report of a dog through the ice at the Andalusia Water and Sewage Treatment Plant, 200 8th Street West, at about 11:40 a.m. Thursday, January 15, 2015.

A barking dog got the attention of a man working on a door at the plant. It was that dog’s persistent barking that prompted the man to look up; that’s when he noticed another dog, with its head just above the water, in an unfrozen section of a huge water treatment basin.

“I think he was trying to tell me something, he was saving his friend, and I kept telling the dog that it would be alright, that we were getting help as quick as we could,” said Dungan.

Plant workers quickly used a rope to launch a flat-bottomed boat to the stranded animal. As one person got ahold of the dog, others used the rope to pull the boat – and the dog – to the edge of the basin.